From Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins   7 Aug 1811

EH Turner to Ellen 7 August 1811. Black wax

In the hopes, my dear Madam, that your good nature me thinks I know from long experience to be excessive, will induce you to receive with complacency a letter containing virtually nothing other than thanks & nursery intelligence, I venture to set about writing you such a letter; & if you find it too trifling for even a temper like yours to suffer, I must thank you to remember that I write it in obedience to your commands, to which I now am, & to which I always shall be, disposed to pay the most implicit obedience. To begin then with something xxx regularity, for even in trifles I would if I could preserve a degree of order, any thanks are on all accounts most justly due to you; & you remind me of the famous speech of Cato on the conspirators of Cataline when you speak of lying under anything like an obligation to me; though he considered it as a proof of the decay of Rome that the meaning of words was distorted to what is quite different from their original sense, & I far from regarding a similar instance in Ireland as symptomatic of the same effect, am myself so perverted that I look upon it as an indisputable proof of the prevalence of every generous & noble feeling. Upon the subject of your Jungermanniae Mr Hooker desires me to say that No 37 is a new & most beautiful variety of Jung. byfracea I think he is wrong & I have just written to him so, & begged to examine it again.

31 J pauciflora

32 J. hamatifolia – so at least he proposes at present to call it: this is the same as he in a former letter called by mistake J. curvifolia.

34

35

36

24

Mr Hooker being desirous that you should be in possession of a specimen of every British species of Jungermanniae from himself, even those that you have yourself given to him, sent the whole of them to me for you a week ago, & I fortunately have met with a gentleman going last Monday to Dublin, who engaged to deliver them to Mackay. I would have added the Lapland Tour had I not that moment got your letter, telling me you had ordered it, & I doubt you will not find a second reader of such a book in the mountains about Bantry. Now for my Nursery – Mrs Turner is now certainly & rapidly recovering after having been till the last 4 days in a state of such debility as rendered her ultimate recovery doubtful. Thus it is that prevents me now having any thing whatever botanical to tell you. Your namesake (shall I add your godchild) is thriving as we wish; though at present a puny child — she promises as the Nurse tells me to be the best featured among a plain family, & most to resemble her mother, who some years ago was a very fine woman & still much remains of it at 37 — It was not a little satisfaction to us that you so kindly acceded to our wish that she would be named after you; though indeed neither my wife nor I wanted this to bring you continually to our thoughts. When she gets old enough to lisp a few words, make observations & ask questions that it would puzzle the most renowned doctor to answer & occasionally start doubts sufficient to alarm the cleverest theologists (for all these things children will do & make us ashamed of our ignorance) you may expect my letters to be filled with her history. At present I am contented to say of her that she is well. You must recollect, my dear Madam, you are not only to ask me for the plants of this country, but to send me a list of those of your own for our Linnean Society. Does Mrs Hutchins continue well? Have the kindness to make Mrs Turner’s & my wishes acceptable for her & your brother —

Yours, my dear Madam, ever most truly D Turner

Yarmouth 7 August 1811